Recipes and news from the makers of Zest Recipe Manager

Archives for April 2013

This dish was borne out of an unexpected abundance of mushrooms in my fridge! Both Jane and her parents had found some beautiful swiss browns in the same week, so we ended up with a stack of them. With plenty of other produce from the markets a last-minute dinner party was in order.

Mushrooms this good deserved to take centre stage in an appetiser. I thought offsetting their earthiness with something fresh would make a good combination — hence the gremolata. Although a traditional gremolata would also include raw garlic, I prefer to add the garlic to the mushrooms to give it a little time cooking. Just enough to take off the edge, mind you, a bit of bite is still ideal. When our guests protested at my attempts to clear the leftover mushrooms from the table I knew I had a winner!

Lemon Thyme Mushroom Toasts with Gremolata

Recipe Type: Appetiser

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 10 mins

Total time: 25 mins

Serves: 6 (as an appetiser)

Thyme and mushrooms are a classic combination. In this recipe I use fragrant lemon thyme and fresh gremolata to lift the dish to another level.

Ingredients

500g swiss brown mushrooms

1 bunch lemon thyme, roughly chopped (tough stems removed)

2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed

40g butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 lemon

100g parsley, coarsely chopped

Thin slices of sourdough toast, to serve

Instructions

Brush the mushrooms with paper towel to remove any dirt. Remove the ends of the stems, then chop through vertically into 3mm slices.

Heat a large frying pan over a high heat. Melt 10g of the butter with a touch of olive oil until the butter begins to foam.

Add a third of the mushrooms, season with salt and pepper and fry until starting to colour (but not quite cooked). Put aside and repeat with another two batches of mushrooms.

Return the pan to a medium heat and melt the remaining butter. Add the mushrooms, lemon thyme and garlic and fry for another 1-2 minutes, until the mushrooms are done, stirring to combine.

For the gremolata: zest the lemon into the small bowl with a fine grater. Add the juice of the lemon and the parsley then stir to combine.

To serve top each slice of toast with a generous pile of mushrooms and garnish with a teaspoon or two of gremolata (to taste). Tuck in while it’s hot!

This week Good Food put together a long “bucket list” for foodies in Australia. Apart from great dining locations, the list features some amazing experiences that include food from all around the country. Be sure to check out the comments and the many contributions using #foodiebucketlist on Twitter!

The winners of this London-based food photography competition were announced last Thursday. A gallery of all finalists is available online and is a real feast for the eyes. The photos span not just food, but the people and places from which it originates. Personally I love the “Food in the Street” category.

The Wall Street Journal interviews Cecilia Chiang, a pioneer of Chinese food in America. Chiang will receive a well-deserved lifetime achievement award from the James Beard Foundation next month for her contribution to Chinese cuisine in the US. My only criticism of this interview is I wish it was longer! It was interesting to hear why Chiang feels Chinese food is being held-back today: because the top chefs are not paid well enough relative to what they can earn in China. I do feel Chinese restaurants still have some preconceptions to overcome to compete at the fine-dining level in Western countries. It’s hard enough keeping top restaurants afloat without your diners having a set idea of what Chinese food should cost!

This is why serious competitions use blind tasting. The Guardian reports that a cut-price gin from Aldi won a silver medal at the International Spirits Challenge 2013, beating out several more-prestigious rivals. You can have a bottle of the award-winning Oliver Cromwell London Dry Gin for less than £10 at UK Aldi stores! So next time remember: don’t judge a gin by its bottle.

The idea of an ocean cruise is, in my mind, scary enough. But how about one themed around popular cooking show Top Chef? Max Silvestri from Eater braved the four day adventure around the Gulf of Mexico and relates his experience in entertaining fashion. From the sound of it the cruise was enjoyable enough, but the Top Chef angle appeared to be a gimmick rather than anything substantive. For the former contestants that came along, in fact, it sounded more like an ordeal than a holiday!

Food doesn’t get much simpler than cong you bing – Chinese scallion “pancakes”. These are actually an unleavened bread filled with spring onions and fried — classic street fare. As with all breads they are best when fresh and with just the right amount of oil — so they are hot, flaky, moist, salty and moreish!

The pancakes are cheap to buy from Shanghainese restaurants, but making bread is always fun. So when I came across a recipe in Serious Eats (originally from The Chinese Takeout Cookbook) that claimed the pancakes are easier to make than you expect I decided to give it a crack. I was slightly sceptical given the multiple steps required to flatten, roll, scroll then flatten again — it sounds like something easy to mess up on your first attempt. But I have to concede it really was simpler than I thought!

The rolling was no problem at all — things held together well and even when the onions poked through the dough it was not a real issue. The oil actually made it easier to roll than some other breads as it helps stop things from sticking. The only trick was getting the hang of how much oil and salt you need to get the flavour you expect. As noted by the recipe and on Serious Eats, you really do need to be liberal with all of the filling, including the salt, to get a tasty end result. After my first attempt was slightly dry and bland I made a few adjustments was not disappointed!

I didn’t follow the recipe to the letter, although my modifications were pretty minor. The largest change was using several more spring onions than the recipe called for. Also, instead of the prescribed peanut oil, I used a mix of vegetable and sesame oil, because I just love the sesame aroma. It’s a pretty simple recipe to play with, so I’ll probably be more adventurous in future. I encourage you all to give it a go and add some imagination!

The weekend before last, Mozart (the resident schnauzer) was well overdue for a trim. This gave us cause to walk to Glebe and drop him off for his epic (3 hour!) grooming. With plenty of time to kill we sought out a nice place to relax and have a light lunch, and spied a sizeable local crowd (always a good sign) at Madame Frou Frou. We tipped ourselves into a couple of their old cinema chairs to take in the quirky diner atmosphere.

For myself I chose the beef burger, and Jane opted for a ham and cheese croissant. Although the croissant is such a simple thing it can be a risky order — I’m always astounded by the ability of cafes to either burn one or fail to melt the cheese (the most talented somehow manage to do both!) — so it was nice to see it properly toasted. The burger, aside from the slightly plastic cheese, hit the spot — especially the beetroot relish. The coffee (with beans from Double Roasters) was also superb. Not bad for a chance walk-in!

With beetroots (and beef) already in the fridge at home I was inspired to come up with a relish of my own. I thought it might be fun to try something with a bit of spice, hence the anise and cloves. It took a bit of balancing work, and is tricky to taste alone (being quite powerful) but once served with the roasted beef fillet it turned out to be a winner!

Spiced Beetroot Relish

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 1 hour 30 mins

Total time: 1 hour 50 mins

Serves: 1 large jar

A sweet, sour and spiced flavour punch, this relish will wake up any dish!

Ingredients

500g beetroot (around 4 medium beets)

2 red onions

1 cup malt vinegar

1/4 cup water

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 lemon

3 star anise

8 cloves

1 tablespoon olive oil

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Trim and clean the beetroot and wrap tightly in foil. Place on a baking tray and roast for 30 minutes (only part cooked).

Meanwhile, peel and slice the onions into 2mm half-circles. Heat the oil in a medium saucepan over a medium-high heat and add the onions, seasoning immediately with a good pinch of salt and pepper.

Saute the onions, stirring, until they are browned. Immediately turn down the heat to low and continue to cook gently for a further 10-15 minutes.

Remove the beetroot from the oven, unwrap and allow to cool until they can be handled. Peel the beets then chop into 2mm matchsticks.

Use a vegetable peeler to remove the zest from the lemon in strips, avoiding the white pith.

Add the beets, vinegar, water, star anise, cloves, sugar, lemon zest and the juice of the lemon to the saucepan with the onions. Bring to the boil then slow to a gentle simmer.

Cook until the liquid has completely reduced, about 50 minutes, at which point the relish should be sticky and delicious!

Remove the zest, anise and (if possible) cloves then store the relish in a sterlisied jar.

Serve with rare roast beef, or add to burgers for a flavour kick!

Notes

To cook the onions down without burning use a very gentle heat and add an occasional splash of water if necessary.

Chopping the beets into matchsticks is time-consuming, but I prefer the texture this way. If you’re in a hurry you could grate them instead.

If you only read one article about food this week, set aside a bit of time and make it this one. A brilliant read, Matt Goulding takes an in-depth look at the genius behind the scenes at El Bulli. Since the famed restaurant closed in 2011, Albert has come out from his brother Ferran’s shadow via multiple new restaurant ventures. His creative energy, the capacity to dream up new ways to cook and combine ingredients, seems almost boundless. When a new dish works I bet it is mind-blowing! (And even when it doesn’t, I bet it’s never dull.)

The statistics are thought-provoking, Simone Egger informs us that “… Australians throw out 4 million tonnes of food every year”. We can all make a difference at home with a little bit of effort to make full use of what we have, including composting waste. Even if you lack yard space, initiatives such as Cultivating Community can bring you together with neighbours who produce their own food and compost in community gardens. The article rounds up with some starting ideas for recipes to help make full use of your groceries . A personal favourite of mine is bubble and squeak: refrying your leftover veggies to create something new and delicious (so much better than microwaving)!

Matching wine with spicy food can be tricky. I know in my case all I tend to do is go a bit further to the sweet side of the spectrum than normal, and usually land on something like a verdelho. In this article Fiona Beckett makes the point that spicy dishes vary widely, so you need to put a bit more thought than I do into your selection. There are a few examples of pairings to give you a more concrete idea. Recommendations range across all wines from dry to sweet, both red and white. Even a wheat beer get’s a crack, which I don’t recall ever trying (I guess most often the beer menus are filled with regional lagers, which could make it tricky).

You might have noticed from a few of my posts that I love making bread of all kinds. There’s just something fun about working with dough, and nothing beats a freshly-cooked bread! If you can relate to that, then you’ll probably also connect with this blog post on Zeb Bakes. It’s a stroll down memory lane, recounting a five-year journey from novice to experienced home baker. We’ve all had our misses, that bread that burned or didn’t rise, but it’s all part of the experience. I find a little uncertainty makes the hits even more exciting, anyway! It’s summed up in the closing sentiment: “…question everything, practise lots, study your failures, as they will tell you more than you think, and have a good time!”.

How’s this for a creative streak: pastry Chef Caitlin Freeman has produced a range of desserts inspired by great modern art. Fittingly, these eye-catching treats are on offer at the Blue Bottle Coffee Shop on the root of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. For some of us, sadly, California is a little bit too far to go for a slice of Mondrian. Never fear, though, because you can get the recipes in Caitlin’s book Modern Art Desserts and try your hand at a bit of art in the kitchen!

This recipe was inspired by a dish at our favourite local French bistro, Bistro Bruno. We were served a similar brûlée on our first visit to Bruno, several years ago (before I was a local!). It left an impression and I’ve been meaning to try out something similar ever since. The stars seemed to align with the current abundance of limes and a Thai dinner planned on Sunday — the perfect prelude to this dessert.

The lime ice was a late addition. The brûlée only uses the lime zest, and I wanted to avoid wasting the rest of the fruit. The result is a pleasant, refreshing foil to the rich custard. It’s great as a palate cleanser before the brûlée, or as a fresh break during and afterwards. If you have another use for the lime flesh, though, you can simplify the recipe by omitting the ice.

Credit for the basic brûlée recipe goes to my recently-acquired cookbook The Science of Good Cooking. For recipes that can be tricky, like custards, this book gives detailed instruction with accompanying explanations. A great gift from my sister-in-law!

Coconut and Lime Crème Brûlée with Lime Ice

Recipe Type: Dessert

Cuisine: French

Prep time: 50 mins

Cook time: 3 hours

Total time: 3 hours 50 mins

Serves: 4

A brûlée with a difference: still luscious but slightly less rich and more fragrant.

Ingredients

4 limes

1 1/4 cup thickened cream

3/4 cup coconut cream (choose a high-quality, high-fat brand)

70g (about 1/3 cup) caster sugar, plus extra for topping

6 egg yolks

pinch of salt

2/3 cup water

3 tablespoons sugar

toasted coconut flakes, to serve

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 140°C.

Zest the limes with a fine grater or zester, avoiding the white pith.

Add half of the cream, half of the coconut cream, 70g caster sugar, zest and salt to a saucepan and bring to a gentle boil, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.

Remove from the heat and let stand for at least 15 minutes to allow the lime flavour to infuse.

Meanwhile, line a deep baking dish with paper towels, space 4 medium ramekins in the dish and bring a full kettle of water to the boil.

When the warm cream has infused with lime flavour, add the remaining cream and coconut cream and stir to combine.

Add the egg yolks to a large mixing bowl and whisk well.

Add the cream mixture to the eggs in 3-4 separate batches, whisking to combine after each batch.

When the egg and cream mixture is well combined, strain it into a jug through a fine sieve (to remove the zest).

Divide the mixture evenly among the ramekins.

Place the baking dish on the oven tray, then carefully pour the boiled water into the dish until it reaches at least 2/3 of the way up the sides of the ramekins.

Bake until the centre of the brûlées are just set, about 25 minutes (the shallower the ramekins, the shorter the cooking time).

Remove the ramekins from the water bath and place on a wire rack to cool for 2 hours, then cover with cling wrap and refrigerate to chill.

While the brûlées are cooling, prepare the ice. Combine the juice of the limes with 2/3 cup of water and 3 tablespoons of sugar in a small saucepan.

Heat the mixture over a low-medium heat and stir to dissolve the sugar.

Once the sugar is dissolved, remove from the heat and allow to cool. Pour the cooled mixture into a shallow tray and place in the freezer to set.

Check the ice occasionally to mix and break it up with a fork. When it is just set, use the fork to scrape the ice into shavings. Keep the shaved ice in the freezer until ready to serve.

To serve, remove the brûlées from the fridge and uncover. Add about 1 teaspoon of sugar to the top of each ramekin, spreading it into an even, thin layer. Use a chef’s torch to caramelise the sugar.

Allow to cool, optionally refrigerating again to chill the custard, then garnish with toasted coconut and serve alongside lime ice.

Notes

Fresh, firm limes with smooth skin are much easier to zest and will yield much more flavour.

Try replacing the zest with shredded kaffir lime leaves for an even more fragrant variant of this recipe!

We kick off this week’s Five with a serious visual feast. Sepia and Tomte Tea put together an absolutely stunning tea degustation, and Eat Show and Tell have captured it in its full, luxurious glory. Sadly for tea lovers (including myself!) this limited event has ended, but there is good news:

In the last couple of decades, chefs around the world have been using the science of cooking to explore new culinary landscapes. Although there is an art to it, cooking is also chemistry, and understanding the interaction of ingredients is key to creating a successful dish. In this column Gary Marcus describes how a partnership between the Institute of Culinary Education and IBM is exploring the application of technology to the science of ingredient selection. Although the technology described sounds quite primitive at the moment, it seems inevitable that it will improve over time. The combination of brute computational force with the creative flair of experienced chefs should bring us some exciting new flavour combinations in the years to come!

We’ve recognised the importance of sweet, sour, bitter and salty flavours for centuries, if not longer. But as Amy Fleming points out in The Guardian, western cooking is still puzzling out the “fifth taste”: umami. Though it may not have been explicitly identified, good cooks have found its power through experience. There’s a reason so many Italian recipes use tomatoes, parmesan and anchovies. And I guess it’s the same reason I try to convince unbelievers that anchovies are just like salt on steroids! Seriously, add these little gems to your pizza and pasta sauces and let them work their magic!

Valentine Warner certainly doesn’t have the profile of some of his UK peers (the Jamies, Nigellas and Gordons of the world), so you may not have come across him before. Here’s your chance: he has just launched a new website with a (hopefully growing) collection of recipes. The site looks great, which always helps stir up some inspiration. I especially appreciate the effort to show recipes and ingredients by season: check out the fish and shellfish page as an example. This is no surprise given Warner’s focus on local sourcing in What To Eat Now. Of course it’s not as immediately useful to those of us on other side of the planet, but that’s just the nature of sourcing things locally when they are at their best.

(Via @Good.) I’ll end this Five on a feel-good “human interest” story: that’s the formula, right? In a time where there is much consternation about online slacktivism, an 8 year old in California shows us all how it should be done. Troubled by the plight of slaves, particularly children, young Vivienne Harr decided to do something about it. Her lemonade stand captured the attention of an international audience and has raised over US$50K in the first two months. But Vivienne was not ready to stop yet: her goal was $150K and, of course, she cracked it!

The very first entry in our original Zesty Five was from the Felicity Cloake’s “How to cook the perfect…” column in the Guardian. If you’re not familiar with the column, each week Felicity takes on a classic dish, researching a variety of recipes and combining them into her own perfect version. That week Felicity took on the Moroccan classic: the Chicken Tagine.

Just a few days later on a glorious Easter Saturday, Jane and I decided to make a visit to Sydney Park. On the spur of the moment we decided we were close enough to Alexandria to walk over to The Grounds for lunch — hoping that it might be quieter than usual thanks to the holiday weekend. Well, we were wrong:

The place was packed thanks to their first birthday markets! We quickly gave up on a sit-down lunch, though we did share a burger. Instead we embraced the markets, and as luck would have it came across these little preserved beauties:

As they say: when life gives you markets, buy lemons! Or something like that, anyway. In fact we also picked up some lovely olives from the chatty man on the Salt Meats Cheese stand — I think you can see where this is going!

This was all the motivation we needed to take on Felicity’s tagine recipe. And by “we”, I mean Jane, because in this case I must admit I barely lifted a finger. Jane made a couple of modifications, in particular breaking down a whole chicken instead of using just thighs (this was the best chicken we could get with the skin intact), and using a cast iron pan rather than an actual tagine. But by and large she kept it true to Felicity’s formula, and the results speak for themselves:

The meat, including the breast, was succulent and flavourful – although I note that only the thigh stays just as juicy when reheated. There is a wonderful burst of flavour from the olives, preserved lemon and coriander — the things that originally drew me to this dish. But the real star is the broth. Felicity’s recipe shows restraint with the spices, and includes just enough water. There’s enough volume to soak through your cous cous, yet little enough to allow all the spices and juices to concentrate. Felicity nailed this recipe, and Jane prepared it perfectly. What a lucky trip to The Grounds that turned out to be!

I love the aniseed flavour of fennel, which comes with a lovely sweetness when the bulb is roasted. Amping it up with extra honey and balsamic ensures your roasted vegetables will be anything but boring! Just make sure you balance it out with savoury notes — in this case the feta and pumpkin seeds.

Honey Balsamic Roasted Fennel with Sweet Potato

Prep time: 10 mins

Cook time: 35 mins

Total time: 45 mins

Serves: 4 (as a side)

Put the “sweet” in sweet potato with this honey roasted fennel. This is a one-tray recipe: after the preparation you just throw the lot in the oven!

Ingredients

1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil

2 sweet potatoes, halved lengthwise then sliced about 5mm thick

1 1/2 teaspoons fennel seeds

1 large bulb fennel

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

2 teaspoons honey

1 tablespoon pepitas (pumpkin seeds)

100g persian fetta

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 180C.

Add the sweet potato, fennel seeds, 1 tablespoon of olive oil and a good pinch of salt and pepper to a bowl and toss to coat the potato.

Remove the fennel stalks then slice the bulb vertically, across the narrower dimension, into 5mm slices. They should hold together from the base.

Add the fennel slices, remaining 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil, balsamic vinger, honey and a pinch of salt to a bowl and toss to coat the fennel.

Spread the sweet potato and fennel on a lined baking tray and roast in the oven until the sweet potato is nearly tender, about 30 minutes.

Add the pepitas to the baking tray and roast for a further 5 minutes so the vegetables are done and the seeds are toasted.

Arrange the cooked sweet potato and fennel on a serving platter then scatter with the toasted pepitas and crumble fetta. Serve immediately.

A huge part of my love of travel is the chance to try the local food, to discover a new ingredient or flavour. The next best thing is discovering something new in my on back yard, so I’m intrigued by some of the lesser-known offerings in Ben Groundwater’s list of foreign foods yet to make it big in Australia. For even more ideas be sure to skim the comments (online news comments — brave I know!).

(Via Serious Eats.) Ben’s article highlights simple, every day dishes — street food. These dishes become staples in their culture for good reason: they tend to be a straightforward combination of a few fresh, local ingredients. This humble dish from Laos looks like the perfect mouthwatering example — I’ve got to try making it! I just need to get my hands on some tender, fragrant lemongrass.

(Via Life Bites.) It claims to be for the UK but this epic cheat sheet is a handy reference no matter what units of measurement you prefer. And let’s face it, these days you’re as likely to find a recipe in foreign measurements as local ones. If you need a helping hand with conversions, want to improve your knowledge of meat or just want some tips for cooking basics print this out and whack it on your fridge!

(via Mark Bittman.) The science of nutrition is complicated enough without industry marketing muddying the waters. The findings of dentist Cristin Couzens, as described in this Kelly Crowe article, are a timely reminder of the nature and power of big business. We should expect that industry will protect itself, so I’m glad there are people like Cristin our there asking questions. Remember: always check the source of evidence, and their source of funding!

I end this five on a sad note with the passing of Roger Ebert this week. Although better known as a journalist and (in particular) film critic, Ebert was also a keen cook. In recent years, thanks to his blog and book about cooking everything from stews to cakes in a rice cooker, Ebert had developed a cult following online. Kim Severson’s article from 2010 captures the spirit of a man who continued to cook and share his food even when illness had claimed his own ability to enjoy a normal meal.